Charles Jimenez I gained knowledge of Fear X from my interest in director Nicolas Winding Refn, after watching Drive, Only God Forgives, and The Neon Demon, I simply wanted to see more from Refn's filmography.Although Fear X is an interesting film, you wouldn't miss anything if you didn't watch this film.Some aspects are great, for instance the introduction intrigued you immediately from the great cinematography. However, the film falls flat on its creativity and where Fear X stands in the industry as well as Refn's filmography.In-comparison to Refn's other films, this is the simplest film I've seen from Refn, the film doesn't require an open-mind, just an interpret-able mind to fill in the blanks.I'd only recommend this film to fans of Refn as well as to people who feel as if they've seen everything.

punishmentpark I saw this before a long while ago, and mostly remembered the really good atmosphere (those small town views are priceless), which was still there this second time around. The story is really interesting for a long time, but when a lot is revealed in the scene with the characters Adamson (he is some sort of police chief or judge) and Peter (and one other guy - also police), it all becomes quite inane and uninteresting. In my mind, things stayed much more unclear and dark when I first viewed it. Too bad.The atmosphere still stands though, and the two stories of two men (families) in different, distant states is still interesting up to a point. The little mysterious and arty bits that director Nicolas Winding Refn put in here and there (a red lit hand, a face pressing through some piece of clothing and some special effects kind of thing) really added little or nothing to the whole. The acting is pretty much perfect, though.Another film that has quite a few qualities, but is ultimately rather inane. In such cases, I am mostly lenient; 5 out of 10.

baderfan Getting past the past bereavements has always been a tough task to do; in which for the most suffered or the ones who made the others suffer, would be the most difficult. Fear X deliberately manages to distinguish between the suffered and the latter,in one single character; In other words, exactly like the approach used in David Lynch's masterpiece "Lost Highway"!Built up slowly and reasonably to the point of inaccurately calculated and annoying ambiguity, its deliberately failure to offer a precise conclusion, fails to offer something different or newer than the above-mentioned feature film, likewise made the intentional obscurity,pointless and the movie in every word stutters before the Lost Highway's extremely exquisite words./ C+

Lawrence Griffin OK, so this movie looked promising. It's about a guy who's wife got killed, and he's looking for her killer through old tapes. Sounded like something I'd like, so I picked it up. The first strike against it is that it's a PG-13 horror film, and those are always watered down and lame. Now, I didn't let that bother me too much, it still could've been a good film, but...no...no it is not. It was about ten times worse then I expected. So here we have this piece of crap posing as a real suspense/thriller film. It's biggest problem is the fact that it goes nowhere. It tried to be atmospheric and dark, but it turned out as the dullest slice of dreck I've ever had the displeasure of viewing. It's basically a 45-60 minute film stretched out into a 91 minute one by making everything go slower then it should.There are long, aggravating periods of silence where the camera just focuses on our main character's face, for no reason, before he responds to someone. It gets especially suicide-inducing toward the so-called "climax", where our main dude Harry is "facing off" against the man who killed his wife (oh, and we never get an explanation as to why he killed her, either...if we did then I was too drowsy to notice). There are very long and agonizing periods of silence in between the line delivery. Do they think this is EPIC? A laughing matter! Not to mention the acting is horrible and the lines aren't exactly pushing the story along at a fast rate. It annoyed the hell out of me. I was mentally urging them to get on with it, get to some action. It was putting me to sleep, so much that I missed the 30-second (ship...going...overboard...) action scene where the climax ended. There are also highly irritating sequences of red swirling in between all of this, that made me feel like I was dying from the flu. What is the point of that? I don't know, nor do I really want to find out. I really wish I was kidding about everything I just said, cause I tried to enjoy this.I thought the movie could pick up, come to a glorious climax and redeem itself...but then the credits start to roll. What the hell?No, this movie isn't visionary. No, it's not thrilling or atmospheric, and it's certainly not comparable to real thrillers. It's just a pale shadow of what it should be; a weak and poor imitation of the giants of the genre (Memento, The Shining, etc). There's nothing redeeming here, and no particular reason to ever watch it. Don't be fooled by people telling you it's artistic, because that's just what the writers want you to think, a cop out to hide how bad this truly is. People will try to pass off everything they don't understand as visionary and artistic and beautiful, but in this case, the movie just sucks. There is nothing to get, and it makes no sense for the average rating to be this high. Thus, this movie is a lie, a hoax, a carefully crafted piece of satire on everyone who ever took a thriller seriously. Try again next time, pals.In conclusion, this is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. They tried to be epic and gripping, and they came out as dull and boring. And thus it rested back on it's laurels, and tried to pass as one of those cult films that everybody interprets differently, but I see through that, too---this movie fails on every level. I'd rather watch paint dry then ever see this aberration again, for this is probably one of the worst movies ever made. Uninspired, boring, pretentious crap that amounts to nothing.